Malheur, Malheur
by nothingwillsuffice
Summary: The last she expected was to find solace in one of the kin of her father's murderers. The last he expected was to be given the chance to be seen for who he was. Even if only for a small moment.


_Woe to me, I was born here._

 _I looked for a reason, and was told "That's the way it is,"_

 _Woe to me, I saw these horns in the night._

 _My father told me, "Don't say anything, that's the way it is here."_

 _That's the way it is here._

 ** _. £ ø t μ r a ._**

Allura blanched at the color of the sky as she tread down worn sidewalk. She tired of it, and looked to her feet for something different, but only found more of the same: grey. Everything was grey. She didn't like it. She wanted to loathe it, but she didn't know anything else to compare the grey to. All she knew was that she didn't like where she was, where she stayed, where she drowned: there was no escape.

There was no escape.

She glanced around her, facing the inevitable. The trees, she found, luscious and tall, were green. Not grey or withered, perfectly healthy. Even so, she scrutinized, they were. . . lackluster-- if a tree could be. Allura imagined they could if they were green but without viridity. If they were sturdy but without a spine.

And the birds. Their songs sounded mournful, like a sickly high dirge, horrible.

And the houses. They all seemed hollowed out in her quiet suburban street, on the verge of dilapidation.

And the puddles. They reflected the sky's dreary face, revealed themselves to be many fallen tears.

And the wind carried sobs.

As she gained on her house, she trailed the cracks in the street with her eyes. She counted the copious number of them, thought she might have even found new cracks in the old stone. It was terribly likely. Her rapt attention was broken by the arrival of a cool wind, long and silky. It rustled the trees in the lawns of every house on the street, wove its invisible fingers through Allura's knotted hair; while it provided a comfortable, lush pressure against the planes of her face and chest, it was cold. Allura didn't like it. She frowned to the skies again, her skin turning as pallid as the vision; it was only fall, but without the sun's rays, there was nothing to balance the temperature.

 _It's cold outside, s_ _unshine, where are you?_

She arrived to her home. As she climbed up the three stairs to her house, old with washed-out white paint and touched by brownish grey stains that would taint them forever, she took out her keys, silver and dull. While she opened the door. Allura lightly tapped the toe of each of her shoes against her concrete porch, making sure she kept as much of the outdoors as she could outside.

Allura sighed once inside. Her ears drank in the silence of the house; she closed the door behind her silently. Even the iron handle of the door was quiet when she used its lock. She took off her shoes mutely, set them by the front door.

Out of habit and a homesick heart, she padded around the house in her socks before doing anything else. She peered into every of three bedrooms, each of two lavatory. Her father's office came last, and she lingered the longest there. A bitter expression touched her face as she took in the vacancy of the room, washed in blue-grey light from a blinded window and with every surface covered by a sheen of undisturbed dust. His leather chair faced away from her, towards the window behind his desk. Allura sighed as she finally left.

The house was entirely uninhabited, save for herself.

 _Tonight I return alone,_ _like yesterday, before yesterday_.

She went back to her bedroom and stayed there. It was early for rest, about three in the afternoon, but the day had been long and dreary. Allura fell asleep.

. £ ø t μ r a .

 _The feeling the world is looking at me wrong._

He hid in plain sight as he was frequent to, but his wits were still about him; his life was always in danger. If the humans around knew about him, there was no doubt in his mind that his blood would be sought after. Not for the first time, Lotor pondered with wry skepticism what the reason was for that.

His mind supplied the obvious answer: fear. Extreme prejudice in the face of the unknown, the frightening. A primitive response to what had the potential to be lethal. The "better safe than sorry," ideology followed that train of thought, and he gnashed his teeth in sharp distaste of it; he wasn't a fan.

He would argue that he was harmless if it were true. But even while he couldn't, it was no reason for others who didn't know him to be brash. Lotor imagined walking into the grey coffee shop across the street with his claws and his fangs drawn, the glow of his eyes present. In the very next moment, he imagined being run through by a silver weapon.

No, he would never be able.

He walked along the sidewalk during daylight, passing that coffee shop by, grateful for the cloud cover; his skin was dark, but it was sensitive to the sun. He looked around in appreciation. The city was far from bustling, but lives with hearts and limbs moved about the concrete setting, monotonous cars created mellow traffic, and every now and then a person with a pet would traipse by. Personally, Lotor preferred to not be in the presence of animals because his sensitive nose picked up far too much scent, but his intrigue at the rituals of the day and its dwellers far outweighed any disgust he may have found.

At least, that is what he thought.

He turned a random corner on a new street he had yet to venture, sparsely driven and with surprisingly few cracks, and found his father. Of all beings, his _father_ stood like a brick wall on the walkway, his tall, broad body nearly blocking the entire width of the sidewalk. His large arms were crossed over his chest and his gaze was poison. Lotor knew his father was very upset.

He set off towards home without a single word.

"I've told you time and time again: do not walk under the sun,"

Within the shelter of their dark house, his father struck him across the face with the back of his large hand, knocking him onto the floor. He'd been hit many times and learned to deal with the shock, but it never stopped his body from suffering; he saw double.

"And not only do you defy me," his father struck again, this time with a foot to his stomach, "you take the wretched form of those day dwellers and walk among them!"

Lotor grit his teeth as he took more of his angry father's abuse. When he hissed with the dealing of each injury, he hissed in anger rather than in pain. Otherwise, he uttered nothing.

His father bellowed, " _Shame!_ "

And Lotor cringed from the boom of his sonorous tenor.

 _Ah, if only I could beat him back,_

 _Give him back the blows,_

. £ ø t μ r a .

Allura woke up around ten in the evening. She padded around the house again and decided that she wanted to go for a walk (the emptiness was bound to swallow her if she stayed). Descending the three stairs to her house, she took in the sight of nighttime. She was relieved to have a break from the greyness of everything, but the blackness of everything was far from a solace. She favored the idea of walking onto lamplight. She followed the splotches of warded shadows down the street.

Allura walked numbly for a while, hands in the pockets of her pale pink jacket, and eventually, she came to an intersection in the busier parts of town. There were no cars on the road at all that night. It should have worried her, but it didn't. In part because there had never been cars on the road after nine at night for as long as she had lived in Arus. It was a ritual known only by the faithful residents of the city; one who lived in Arus always knew someone new came to town when they spotted a straggler after the unofficial curfew. One would think Allura a newcomer as well if not for the reputation her father had had and the recognition his entire family shared.

Allura thought of her father as she stared at the traffic lights on the intersection with lethargic eyes and obeyed the street laws despite the lack of activity. She waited until the bright crimson hand on the other side turned into a grey walking man before she tread the crosswalk, uncontested. Movements slow with melancholy, Allura looked around as she crossed, smiling in bitter remembrance at the faded lines of the pathway beneath her feet. She began to reminisce. _I_ _remember the advice my father used to give._ Once, he had been her counsel at that very same crosswalk.

 _"Look left and right just before you cross,"_ he'd said.

Allura had done exactly as he told her to. They'd crossed safely and went on their way, but Allura had been a child who forgot all that she deemed a secondary concern; time and time again she was reminded to look before she crossed, and time and time again the rule slipped her mind. She had been confident in her ability to cross safely as she grew older and no longer needed an escort, and by the luckiest of stars, not once had she payed the price for forgetfulness.

But as of late, her crossing of the street was exactly as her father would have wanted it to be. Allura's heavy eyes were not so laden that she could not give her attention to the dark surrounding her.

 _Yeah, but, Dad, you know, I look everywhere, even in the air._

Dangers lurked at every time of day in Arus, especially at night. It was why no one rose before dawn or stayed out after dusk. However, Allura, true to her nature, could not be bothered with such secondary concerns; her heart throbbed with a pain that had been inflicted weeks ago and had yet to subside. She feared it never would. The priority was focusing on the beat of her stride, the sickliness of the lamplight, and the cracks in the sidewalk so that the greyness which her father's absence had bid to her would leave and she could see colors for what they actually were again.

Allura kicked a small stone in her path. Her hands fisted within her jacket pockets. Her eyes looked up from her feet and looked out into the night, finding this here and that there, and she realized that she had walked much farther than she thought. How long had it been, then? What time was it? She could only guess. But those were secondary concerns too.

Allura sighed lightly as she continued moving further away from her ghost of a home in favor of this neighborhood which she had never had the chance to see. The houses weren't as nice, and the street was worse, and the trees looked mildly abused, but there was a vibe about the place that had always drawn her attention to it. She suspected the source, kept her wits about her as she pressed forward. Knowing Arus, there was no telling.

And when at last a cool breeze swept past on the humid night, a terrible sound was carried to Allura's ears. She heard a pitiful cry, hoarse with distress and injury. It was a soft sound, eery.

Allura wasn't in the habit of ignoring distress, even when busy wallowing in her own sorrow. She picked up the pace of her stride. The sounds of pain led her further down the street, around a corner, and to the mouth of a dark alleyway between an old pharmacy and an unnamed building. She peered into the crevice with baited breath, senses on high. It took her some time to decipher the image washed in trickles of moonlight and crimson darkness, but once her eyes could see what was happening Allura startled.

She'd never seen a demon turn on another before.

It wasn't like the thought hadn't crossed her mind, or that she believed it was impossible, but the concept was kind of ignored in the midst of an inter-realm war where each side needed as many soldiers as they could get and the opposing side was unendingly propagated as the steady enemy-- no one ever stopped to consider anything else. But, Allura recognized, just as humans had beefs with eachother and got angry with one another, demons did too.

Just as humans.

The prejudice guarding her heart broke a little at the fact and with another pained cry from the victim this night. Allura took two steps into the alleyway, gut wrenching from the sight of carnage at the other end, yet her will persevering because of it; she truly did loathe the demons who'd taken her father away, but the victim was not one of those demons-- she knew because she'd seen her father take the life of his killers in the same moment that he'd met his own end-- and this admittedly souless creature still had a life force it wished to retain, so while Allura still could assume its innocence she would help.

From her pocket she withdrew her father's gun which, since weeks past, she had never gone without. She promptly fired three rounds into the head of the unsuspecting. The jerk of the weapon and the noise it produced did not bother her, but she flinched at the sight of the demon she had saved; his eyes were wide with disbelief.

And recognition.

"You," he said, and Allura rushed to the end of the alleyway to help him. His voice was weak and it shook a little, but the baritone of it made up for that. Still, Allura brought herself even closer to him. He cleared his throat before speaking again. "You are Alfor's daughter?"

Allura's breath caught. She stopped her futile attempt to staunch his bleeding. She hadn't expected to be disarmed so abruptly at the mention of her father again, but the wounds were still quite fresh and she missed him horribly. Unable to answer with words, she nodded with tears pricking her eyes. The demon seemed to deflate at her confirmation; his eyes filled with woe.

"I'm sorry,"

Allura shook her head in confusion. She swallowed to speak, eyebrows furrowed. "It wasn't your fault," she croaked. She wanted to ask how he _knew_.

"No," he took a strained breath, "it wasn't. . ."

Allura watched with both terror and fascination as the demon closed his eyes and ceased breathing. He seemed so peaceful she feared he was dead. But he did not dispel like the one she'd killed. Instead, his chest stopped rising and his body grew limp, and the heat in his body faded whilst his soft purple skin turned pallid. He died a human death, but he did not dispel. Allura, unsure of his status, didn't really know what to do.

So she did exactly what her father would have done, and used the darkness of night as her cover while she carried the demon home.

 **. £ ø t μ r a .**

He'd never seen a soul like hers before. It shone purple and blue and pink, a kaleidoscope of different qualities, a reflection of her crystal eyes. And at her center, blinding and small, was pure white-- _pure_ white. Not the grey light he had seen pulsing inside some worthy souls, but _unadulterated white._ It was almost ludicrous-- like a fable featuring some unearthly heroine who'd been blessed by a greater power.

Lotor thanked the Ancients for his fortune. It was an odd thing to do considering he couldn't remember the last time he'd thanked them for anything, thoroughly convinced that they had abandoned him. His faith sparked just a little as he fully processed the fact that he was currently laying in a human girl's house, on her couch, and she was doting on him-- _doting_. On _him_

"Here," she spoke softly a she knelt beside him with a cup in her hands, "drink this,"

Lotor was surprised to find himself more than strong enough to sit up and take her offering.

He marveled at himself. "What did you do?" It wasn't irregular for him to heal quickly, but this. . . this was something else. Alfor's daughter flushed.

"My. . father-- he passed down his alchemic knowledge to me. I. . . repaired you," she gestured to the cup in his hand that was now half empty, "And that is a medicinal brew. You should be better very soon."

Lotor acknowledged the slightly atrocious flavor of the drink and decided to quickly down the rest. His grimace afterwards was not unnoticed by the girl, who looked rather guilty.

"I apologize for the flavor, but--"

"No need. It is a remedy, not a beverage. I greatly appreciate your making it tor me." Lotor smiled at her.

"No. . no problem. . ."

Lotor placed the empty cup on a coffee table beside the couch. He then sat back in his seat, releasing a deep breath of relief. A bit of an awkward silence fell over the dim room.

"Um, if I may," Alfor's daughter speaks, her voice a little timid, a hint pained, "How do you know my father? How do you. . . know me?"

Lotor's gaze softened some as he looked at her. He suddenly desired to reassure her in some physical way, but chose strongly against it. "I lack intimacy with both of you, but our fathers were friends once, improbable as it seems. I recognize your father's image," The girl's eyes widened with several things, hope a surprise to be among them. Lotor appreciated her. "And you. Your face is unfamiliar, but your soul is kindred of your father's. I sense his greatness in you."

"You speak highly of him."

Lotor had to look away from her at that. Through her window his eyes found a tree on her front lawn. "I. . . I never _knew_ your father. But I know he did great things, for your people and mine. This community would not know such peace without his influence."

For a moment, Lotor wondered if he seemed too fond of Alfor's memory. Then he heard sniffling.

He looked over the edge of the couch to see Alfor's daughter shying away from him, dainty hands covering her face as she tried to hide her tears. Lotor pursed his lips.

"Now. . . I'm sorry if I--"

"It warms my heart," she muttered, and wiped the last of her tears away, "It feels better knowing that you-- a demon-- cared about my father's efforts." She met his eyes then, and Lotor could almost _feel_ her sincerity. "When he left. . . I feared that he had died in vain."

His eyes softened some at her words, touched in some way that they shared sentiments. It felt as if he were finding a spot where he fit in, a place where his thoughts were similar to those around him. He'd lived a long life among his father's people, where he didn't belong, where he was trapped, where his mother's sentiments were rubbish. He'd never belonged there-- he'd come to terms with that a long time ago-- and had thought, for a time, that he did not have a place anywhere. But now. Now? Now was his first real conversation with a human. And already he had so much more in common with her than his father's kind.

His father's kind. . .

Lotor began to feel cold deep in his chest, as if coming down from a high to terribly morbid news. The upturn of his lip turned down. He scowled down at the soft-looking carpet Alfor's daughter fiddled with, her cheeks rosy from crying and a fleeting embarassment. His eyes went to the windows. They were bright, thankfully, but it would seem that he had been unconscious a bit longer than just overnight; the afternoon was coming to a close, and the evening would soon follow. Darkness would fall and the other half of this place would rise. He needed to go.

Lotor looked over to her again, to the young alchemist who had shown him mercy. He tried to smile but feared it only showed his worry.

Softly, he said, "I have to go,"

When the girl looked up to his eyes and caught his gaze, there was an understanding there. Her tears had completely dried, and she no longer appeared hurt or touched in any particular way; she was simply aware. Aware of what his departure meant. And it was that awareness, he presumed, that had chilled her heart in light of the peace they had found with another, even if it was just for a few seconds, even if they were strangers to each other.

It had been something of color.

 _I didn't plan this, my enemies are behind me._

 _My enemies are behind._


End file.
